Audrey Hepburn, one of America's most popular actresses, died on January 20, 1993, near her home in Lausanne, Switzerland. Hepburn, 63, underwent colon cancer surgery last November. The daughter of a Dutch aristocratic mother and a British merchant father, Hepburn was born in Brussels, Belgium, and was educated mainly in Britain. During World War II, when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, young Audrey and her mother were in the Netherlands.
Audrey Hepburn in 1956
The war left a lasting mark on Hepburn's family: an uncle and a cousin were executed, and one of her brothers was held in Nazi labor camps. After the war, Hepburn was finally able to return to England, where she became a model as a chorus girl and dancer and began landing in the film.
1981 and then U.S. President Ronald Reagan
While filming one of the films in Monaco, the light and elegant Hepburn was discovered by the French writer Colette and recommended her to play the lead role in a dramatic adaptation of the upcoming novel Gigi. Gigi opened in November 1951 at the Fulton Theater in New York City, where Hepburn's performance received rave reviews.
Director William Wyler was impressed with her audition, and when Hepburn finished her performance on Broadway, he made the production for his film Roman Holiday. "That girl," Wyler is said to have commented after filming was completed, "will be the biggest star in Hollywood." After the release of Roman Holiday in 1953, his prediction seemed to be coming true: Hepburn won the Academy Award for Best Actress (Gregory Pike) for playing a runaway princess in Rome who fell in love with a journalist the same year, and she won a Tony Award for starring in Ondine on Broadway.
Slim, elegant and stylish, Hepburn completely subverted the image of Hollywood's giant breast stars, presenting a new ideal of beauty to millions of movie fans. In Sabrina (1954), Funny Face (1957), and Love in the Afternoon (1957), she matches hollywood actors (William Holden and Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, and Gary Cooper, respectively).
Hepburn's role as Holly Golettley in Breakfast at Tiffany (1961), the embodiment of the ultimate free spirit, was one of her most popular roles and earned her a fourth Oscar nomination for Best Actress. (She was also nominated for Sabrina and 1959's The Sister's Tale).
In 1964, Hepburn was selected for the film version of the musical Lady as Eliza Doolittle, causing controversy over Julie Andrews, who played the role on Broadway. Hepburn partnered with Rex Harrison and performed well, even though her singing voice was dubbed (by Mani Nixon).
In 1967, Hepburn received her fifth Oscar nomination for playing a blind woman whose home was stolen in Wait Until Dark. Shortly after that, she left full-time show business, living in Switzerland most of the time, rarely appearing in films that were both praised (Robin and Marianne, who worked with Sean Connery in 1976) and criticized (pedigree in 1979 and both laughed in 1981). Hepburn married actor Mel Ferrer in 1954 and had two sons with him before divorcing in 1968.
The following year, she married Andrea Dotti, an Italian psychiatrist, and had a son. They later divorced, and she began dating Dutch actor Robert Walders in 1980.
Hepburn's most important work in the last two decades of her life was not documented in film. In 1988, Hepburn was appointed UNICEF Special Ambassador and traveled extensively to raise funds and raise visibility for the organization.
Her UNICEF field trips span the globe, from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela and El Salvador to Turkey, Thailand, Bangladesh and Sudan. In addition to his field work, Hepburn was the organization's eloquent public voice, testifying before the U.S. Congress, attending the World Summit for Children, and giving numerous speeches and interviews on UNICEF's work.
In 1992, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Even after she was diagnosed with cancer, Hepburn continued her travels and worked for UNICEF. In the mourning of countless fans, she was posthumously awarded the Jean Herchott Humanitarian Award at the 1993 Academy Awards, which her son accepted on her behalf. In her last appearance on screen, Steven Spielberg's Forever (1989), Hepburn played an angel who guided the film's protagonist to heaven, a role that aptly reflected the public image of the screen goddess in the last years of her life.